Pretty much the title is self-explanatory. This is for those people who hate the look of the minimap that is generated by Finalsun, and want it to look more 'Official', aka similar to the official Westwood maps.
What follows is a step-by-step guide to do this.

STEP 1:
Take a printscreen of your minimap. This is best achieved by minimizing the main Finalsun app and bringing up the minimap by clicking on it while Finalsun is still minimized. (this removes that annoying box on the minimap.)

NOTE: To save you some trouble ahead, before you take the printscreen of the minimap, delete ALL of the lightposts on your map; this will allow you to skip STEP 2 of PART2. (remember, don't save your map after doing this, as then you'll have to place all of the lightposts again! Instead, close your map and reload it.)

ADVANCED MODE: Load up your map in a text editor, and navigate your way to here:

After you have found it, delete any structure with the inclusion of 'IN' at the start of its name; eg. INBLULMP, INYELWLAMP, INGRNLMP etc. (thanks Lin! )

STEP 2:
Copy and paste that printscreen into paint and remove everything so that only the minimap is shown. (note: you can use IrfanView to do the same, but using paint allows you to get the size more precise.)

STEP 3:
Zoom in and start croppin'!

NOTE: Because Finalsun also includes the area outside of the map border in the minimap, you may also have to crop it a little bit more than the images above; roughly 5-6 pixels worth around the outside should do it. (thanks Bittah. )

PART2: The Paintening

STEP 1:
Now that we have it in paint, lets get rid of all that fugly stuff that makes the minimap look 'unprofessional'.
Click on the Color dropper tool, and select the red from one of the starting positions.
After thats done, click the Brush tool and select the largest square from the selection. (if you feel it's too large, you can then hold CTRL+ "-" to make it smaller (or optionally, CTRL+ "+" to make it larger))
Now click away at those starting positions!

STEP 2:
Well that looks nicer, but what about those invisible lightposts everywhere!
Well, let's get rid of most of them shall we?

This parts pretty simple; just use the Color Dropper to select a color that surrounding the lamps, and then paint over it. Simple!

See, doesn't that look better already? And now for the FUNPART.

STEP 3:
This parts only mainly important if you have blue Tiberium on your map. (which like, everyone should have, jeez u guiz.)
As we all know, blue Tiberium turns out black thanks to Finalsun, but now, it's time to change that!
Simply choose a nice blue color, and paint the black areas blue! (note: you'll have to be careful, as walls are black on the minimap as well, so keep your Original Minimap open in Finalsun so you can check to see what's blue Tiberium or not.

PART3: The Textaning
This is the part where it gets tricky, but we're nearly finished so yay.

Save your preview as .BMP (so that there's no quality loss) and re-open it up in IrfanView. Once it's loaded, save it as a .PCX (save as... -> PCX from the drop down menu)

Now that it's saved, copyandpaste it into the SUN DIRECTORY. (purely so that it's easier for XCC to find.)
Now load up XCC Mixer 1.22, and navigate to your preview.

Now right-click it and select Copy as MAP (TS) Preview.
After you've done that, go to the folder where XCC Utilities is located (1.22). It's here that you'll find a text file named *previewname*.txt
Open it up and copy ALL of the text in it.

Now open up your map in a text editor, and navigate to here:

Now delete all of that text (preview pack included) and replace it with the text from the text file in the XCC folder.

IMO you're better off just taking ingame screenshots from your map, merging them together into 1 huge image, then shrinking and sharpening it and finally converting it to MAP (TS) preview (this is what I did for all maps in DTA).

XCC Mixer always crashes when I do this however, although it does convert the image (sometimes it requires multiple attempts because XCC Mixer crashes slightly too early or something, but copying the converted image to the root of a drive also seems to improve the chances of it working)._________________QUICK_EDIT

IMO you're better off just taking ingame screenshots from your map, merging them together into 1 huge image, then shrinking and sharpening it and finally converting it to MAP (TS) preview (this is what I did for all maps in DTA).

XCC Mixer always crashes when I do this however, although it does convert the image (sometimes it requires multiple attempts because XCC Mixer crashes slightly too early or something, but copying the converted image to the root of a drive also seems to improve the chances of it working).

Yea, that's why I posted a link to v1.22, which, for some odd reason doesn't crash when you convert it. The newer versions crash on me aswell. (sometimes they make the preview, but most of the time it crashes too early, like you said.)

Thanks for the comment anyway. I'm sure someone will find use for this. _________________Ex Cliffie-detector and continued general annoyance.QUICK_EDIT

By the way, another problem with FinalSun minimaps is that includes that non-accessible area (the area outside of the blue rectangle) in the minimap, so you might also want to crop the minimap you're fixing up a little._________________QUICK_EDIT

Adding a line like "To get this map download @ ppmsite.com" as most of our maps are too heavy for damn XWIS to transfer.
perhaps it would help get some of our sexy maps into the hands of more TS players out there_________________The Fall of Hammerfest - Epic Tiberian chain story
Tiberian Odyssey mapping department
The Team Black Index - Steam: TeamBlack aka BeastModeQUICK_EDIT

maybe an improvement would be, to temporarily delete manually the lightposts in the map with a text editor, before you start creating and editing the final minimap. This should be faster and cleaner than a pixel by pixel edit in the picture._________________SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings

maybe an improvement would be, to temporarily delete manually the lightposts in the map with a text editor, before you start creating and editing the final minimap. This should be faster and cleaner than a pixel by pixel edit in the picture.

that is if all the invis light posts are next to each other in the text of the map. From my experience they tend to get jumbled up in the list of placed buildings.

But I must agree nice tutorial. I did always hate how blue tib showed up black on the minimap_________________Kalistia Crestland (2)
In Soviet Russia, grass grows on tiberium!QUICK_EDIT

By the way, another problem with FinalSun minimaps is that includes that non-accessible area (the area outside of the blue rectangle) in the minimap, so you might also want to crop the minimap you're fixing up a little.

Thanks, gonna add that now.

Anderwin wrote:

Should I delete everything under previewpack?

Nice tuts anyway

Yup, all of the text DIRECTLY under the preview pack needs to be deleted, so that it can be replaced with the new preview pack without it glitching up.

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:

maybe an improvement would be, to temporarily delete manually the lightposts in the map with a text editor, before you start creating and editing the final minimap. This should be faster and cleaner than a pixel by pixel edit in the picture.

It's not really a big concern, really. The main ones that stand out are the ones on/near water or in the middle of open areas where they're noticable on the minimap. You're free to do that though. In fact, I'll probably add that to the tut as an optional thing.

Nyerguds wrote:

Finalsun doesn't have an option to just not show the buildings? If there are no neutral buildings on it that's probably easier...

Sadly no. I wish someone with enough time on their hand would remake Finalsun and fix a lot of the problems that are with it. It shouldn't be too hard, considering the lowdown on the TS mappack data is on Olaf's website.

Aro wrote:

Not that I know of anyway.
Followed the tutorial and everything turned out perfectly!

Nice! Glad someone used it. _________________Ex Cliffie-detector and continued general annoyance.QUICK_EDIT

I've used a similar method before to test random images for map preview, just like an ingame unit shot or something. Was pointless but interesting lol. Also, if you have a map with no civilian / neutral buildings on it, but have light posts and don't want them on the preview can't you just save the map, and import it using finalsun and select to not import units and buildings?

Sorry if I read the thread wrong I quickly skimmed the last few posts._________________QUICK_EDIT

Sorry for topic reincarnation but is this for menus only? In-game it draws its own mini-map... Is there something Im doing wrong, or not doing? (Note* Im doing this in RA2)_________________MadHQ's Graveyard - Click here!
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